Captain Thomas Kelly, now in his mid-30s, spent Christmas 1906 in the remote province of Seistan in Persia (present day Iran). There his one task was to stop an outbreak of the plague spreading to India.
It was dangerous. Previous medical officers had caught the disease and died. The tiny British consulate in Nasratabad was attacked by a 500-strong mob claiming claiming Kelly was burning the Koran – an incident reported in newspapers around the world.
But they were British and had standards as Swedish explorer Sven Hedin noted when he stayed at the consulate:
“Six Englishmen, without ladies, were staying in Seistan, and with them I spent nine memorable days. Englishmen have a knack of making themselves at home in whatever part of the world their lot may cast them, and even here in this wretched Nasretabad they lived much as in London. They did not come unshaved to luncheon in the great saloon, and at dinner they appeared in spruce attire, with starched shirts, dinner jackets, and patent leather shoes. And then we sank into the soft armchairs, and took coffee, with prime cigars, and, while the gramophone reminded us of the divas and tenors of the great world, whisky and soda were served, and we talked of Iran, Tibet, and the plague. We were in high spirits; and it was difficult to believe that all the while the angel of death was roaming about in search of his hapless victims.”
We can imagine they ensured Christmas Day 1906 was celebrated with some style.
It took two years but Kelly rid Seistan of the plague.
The Kelly story is told in Fighting for the Empire.
Follow his remarkable life through 12 Christmas Days.
Next: No 6 – Egypt, 1914
Previous: No 4 – Tibet, 1903
Thomas Kelly found himself deep into Tibet on Christmas Day 1903 but with a decent meal and a ‘Best Beard’ competition to take his mind off the hardships he faced. He was a medical officer on the Tibet-Sikkim Mission, sometimes called the Younghusband Expedition, although not by Kelly who loathed Francis Younghusband.
Kelly’s medical unit crossed the Himalayas and arrived at the main expedition base at Chumbi on Christmas Day 1903, just in time to enjoy the one break he was going to have from the monotonous diet of porridge, mutton stew, biscuits, jam and chapatis with the occasional ration of butter. The officers at Chumbi sat down to a Christmas dinner of turkey, ham, plum pudding, mincemeat, cake and champagne, which must have tested the supply lines to the limit. The champagne arrived almost frozen, however, not something that would have bothered Kelly as a teetotaller. This was to be the last culinary treat for a long time as Charles Allen comments in Duel in the Snows: “Almost ten months passed before any of those present enjoyed another meal even half as good”.
Firewood was in short supply and was limited to cooking so the men, officers included, had to rely on the many layers of winter clothing they had been issued to keep warm, much of it not removed for days on end. Just about every man abandoned shaving, prompting the commanding officer General Leslie Macdonald to jokingly offer a prize for the best beard by Christmas. Unfortunately, we don’t know who won the prize.
The picture shows Kelly – with beard – back right. General McDonald is seated centre.
The Kelly story is told in Fighting for the Empire.
Follow his remarkable life through 12 Christmas Days.
Next: No 5 – Iran, 1906
Previous: No 3 – Chitral, North West Frontier 1900
Christmas Day 1900 would definitely have been a White Christmas for Thomas Kelly
He was now a captain and doctor in the Indian Medical Service, having arrived in India at the beginning of 1897. On Christmas Day 1900 he was serving as senior medical officer with the Chitral Field Force, based high up in the notorious mountain passes between Afghanistan and India (now Pakistan), including the Khyber Pass. He was attached to the 2nd Regiment, Central India Horse, an Indian regiment, and had already mastered Urdu and Hindi.
On the North West Frontier he experienced at first hand the indiscriminate, sudden attacks that rebel tribesmen launched on British and Indian forces and lived with the constant threat of sniper fire, especially when travelling on horseback between the two mountain bases Drosh and Chitral, a day’s journey. Even medical officers were armed on the North West Frontier and Kelly frequently slept with his pistol under his pillow.
One bonus of a posting in such a remote region was the access to local game and as a fine horseman and frequent hunter there is no doubt the Kelly would have helped ensure a hearty meal for the handful of British officers at Chitral on Christmas Day 1900.
The Kelly story is told in Fighting for the Empire.
Follow his remarkable life through 12 Christmas Days.
Next: No 4 – Tibet, 1903
Previous: No 2 – Queen’s College, Galway 1890
The bustle of 20 years earlier was all gone by the time Thomas Kelly was 20 and Christmas Day 1890 was celebrated with just his widowed mother, still living at 2 High Street.
Kelly was by now a final year scholar studying medicine at Queen’s College, Galway with a career in medicine beckoning.
The 1880s had been a dramatic decade for the Kelly family. His father died in 1883, a broken man after a controversial involvement in the brutal world of Galway politics. Another brother, Denis, to whom Thomas was very close, had decided to head off to Bendigo in Australia to join other members of the family. His eldest brother James, who ran the tea merchant business after his father died, passed away aged 44 in 1889 and a few months later his sister Annie entered the Presentation Convent in Galway where she was to spend the rest of her long life.
Further tragedy stuck in November 1890 when his 27 sister Maria died, leaving a young son Denis Valentine Morris. Denis followed his uncle into medicine, mentored and supported financially by Thomas.
Christmas Day at 2 High Street in 1890 must have been a subdued affair.
It was also to be one of the last Thomas Kelly would spend in Ireland.
The Kelly story is told in Fighting for the Empire.
Follow his remarkable life through 12 Christmas Days.
Next: No 3 – Chitral, North West Frontier 1900
Previous: No 1 – Galway 1870
Thomas Bernard Kelly’s first Christmas as a nine-month old baby was spent at the family home above the tea merchants at 2 High Street, Galway.
It would have been crowded as the large family gathered for Christmas lunch after returning from Mass at the Pro-Cathedral where his parents had been married in 1844. Baby Thomas was the youngest of ten children at that stage although his 42-year old mother, Bridget, was almost eight months pregnant: John Philip was born the following February but died less than a year later. This wasn’t the only child she lost in infancy so by 1870 there would have been eight children living in the tiny rooms above the shop: another, Catherine, had joined the Sisters of Mercy and left for life in a convent in Paris a few years before.
This was the last Christmas such a large gathering of the Kelly family took place at 2 High Street. The following year, his 21 year old sister Margaret – who must have taken much of the burden off her pregnant mother that Christmas Day – and 17 year old brother Michael left to join his mother’s Considine relatives in Bendigo, Australia.
They would never see their baby brother again, although through letters and the newspapers they followed his adventures from Down Under.
The picture shows 2 High Street as it is today.
The Kelly story is told in Fighting for the Empire.
Follow his remarkable life through 12 Christmas Days.
Next: No 2 – Queen’s College, Galway 1890
Thomas Kelly lived a life of service and adventure through two World Wars, the Indian Raj, Imperial expeditions and World War Two convoys.
That remarkable story is told in full in Fighting for the Empire but a glimpse of where he was on 12 Christmas Days through that action-packed life offers a colourful flavour of his story.
Many readers will have relatives who selflessly served in these conflicts too so these stories and Fighting for the Empire hopefully give them some insight into how their relatives lived and how they celebrated Christmas.
No 2 – Queen’s College, Galway 1890
No 3 – Chitral, North West Frontier 1900
David Worsfold talks about the Kelly story
Fighting for the Empire is available direct from the distributor Casemate, also from Amazon. It is available through all bookshops. In Ireland it can be ordered through Kennys Bookshop, Galway
I had a nightmare earlier this year in which I foresaw the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union, Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister and Donald Trump being elected President of the United States. A I woke from that nightmare, like most people, I laughed it off as an implausible triple whammy.
Wind forward a few months. Brexit is with us, Johnson is Foreign Secretary and Trump is President. That’s 2.5 out of three on the nightmare scale. Now I am no longer dreaming but looking into the next year and seeing huge potential for worse to come.
Many millions of words have already been written trying to understand Brexit and Trump and many millions will follow before we fully understand the reasons for those unexpected events and their consequences. One thing we do know is that there is a rising tide of nationalism across the western world, with rejection of globalisation and established political orders at its heart. Many commentators describe this phenomenon as populism but that seems far too comfortable a word to describe something that has inescapably sinister undertones.
Whatever labels we apply to this phenomenon it is a grim reality and is gathering force. Casting an eye across the horizon of the next 12 months should be enough to give any progressive liberal nightmares. Destiny seems a grand word to apply to what is going but I believe the destiny of the world is now in the balance to a degree that it hasn’t been since the darkest days of the Cold War in the early 1960s.
2017 – Diary of Destiny
- 4 December – Italian Constitutional Referendum
- 20 January – Inauguration of President Trump
- 15 March – Dutch Parliamentary Elections
- March – UK triggers Article 50
- 23 April & 7 May – French Presidential Elections
- Between 27 August and 22 October – German Federal Elections
Each of those events has the potential to generate huge political turmoil.
Italian Constitutional Referendum
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi failed to get an ambitious package of constitutional reforms aimed at ending the chronic instability of Italian governments – of which their have been 63 in 70 years since the birth of the Republic – through Parliament. He has been forced to hold a referendum and has said he will resign if they are not passed. At the moment the reforms look unlikely to succeed. Another general election could see the internet-based Five Star Movement led by comedian Beppe Grillo making significant gains.
Inauguration of President Trump
By the time Donald Trump gets to make his Inauguration speech we will know what his government looks like and should have a much clearer idea of his early priorities. Will he moderate many of his most outrageous policies? It almost doesn’t matter if he does as he has already changed the mood of American politics and society for the worse.
Dutch Parliamentary Elections
The Dutch elections will almost certainly see a change of government as support for Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Labour Party (PvDA) has collapsed from 40% at the last election in 2012 to around 10%. The main beneficiary has been the right-wing, anti-immigrant Party for Freedom (PVV) led by Geert Wilders which has led in the opinion polls for most of 2016. In government or as the main opposition party in a hung Parliament the PVV could force through a referendum on Dutch membership of the EU which it opposes.
UK triggers Article 50
Prime Minister Theresa May has said this will happen in March 2017 regardless of the decision of the Supreme Court and any subsequent need for a vote in Parliament. In the run-up to that we should get some clarity on the government’s negotiating stance and whether issues around access to the single market passporting for financial institutions and restrictions on free movement of people are likely to form any sort of red line in the negotiations.
French Presidential Elections
At the moment the only certainty is that the Front National candidate Marine Le Pen will poll very strongly, almost certainly making it through to the second ballot as her opponents are still in some disarray. The FN is a fiercely nationalist party which has opposed the European Union since the party was launched in 1993. A Le Pen presidency could mark the end of the EU and totally change the terms of the Brexit debate. This has to be the most disturbing element of the 2017 nightmare.
German Federal Elections
There has been a steady growth in support for Alternative für Deutschland, a rightwing party opposed to the Euro and further European integration but not currently advocating that Germany leave the EU. It has been picking up seats across Germany in state elections and is currently on course to win its first seats in the Bundestag, easily crossing the 5% threshold. This could destabilise Angela Merkel’s grand coalition.
Six key moments of uncertainty over the next year. Brext and Trump were both easily dismissed as threats earlier this year. No-one can afford to make the same mistakes again. We must start speaking out against the evil of intolerant nationalism and thwart its march at every turn. Being melee-mouthed and accommodating has no place anymore. That was tried in the 1930s and look where that ended.
I’m not saying we are heading for a war but we are certainly entering a very dark phase in the history of western democracy.
ENDS
In the immediate aftermath of the shock vote to leave the European Union I felt a prompt start to the Article 50 process was preferable to an extended period of pre-Brexit manoeuvring. Four months later I still think enacting Article 50 quickly would have been better to the prolonging of the uncertainty that delaying it until next March at the earliest has created.
Article 50 is about exiting. It was never going to be about the detail of our future relationship with the EU and the rest of the world, simply because that is far too complex to sort out in two years. Everyone knows that so all we have achieved by hanging around is allow a lot of people here and in the EU to take up entrenched positions while clarifying precisely nothing.
It has actually made the likelyhood of an eventual Hard Brexit more likely.
If we had accelerated the Article 50 process I believe that most of the complex regulations and internal EU free trade arrangements would have been put into a transitional mode, simply because it would have been impossible to even prioritise which ones to sort out before leaving, let alone negotiate new versions to be put in their place. What would have been agreed is some headline grabbing stuff about control of borders on our side and plenty of noise about restricting access to the single market from the EU. Neither would have been immediately deliverable.
This would have created some sensible space to turn those transitional – largely ‘as you were’ – arrangements into something more permanent and probably nearer to a soft than a hard Brexit.
Instead the language on both sides has become intemperate and we now face the near certainty of a rapid plunge towards a much harder Brexit than will be good for us or for the rest of Europe. On top of that we have added further months of uncertainty which will be extended as next year the French and German elections will absorb the attention of the only two countries that now really matter in the EU. No-one wins.
Well, not quite.
Most financial institutions are already planning on the expectation that access to the single market and passporting rights will go. This means that some will have to seek new domiciles within the EU just to continue servicing their existing customers. Regulators in Ireland, Malta and Luxembourg in particular are already reporting high levels of enquiries and applications.
There is one consequence of the delay that might not be entirely detrimental and that is the greater opportunity for Parliamentary scrutiny. Theresa May probably miscalculated when she hesitated over starting the Article 50 process and didn’t entirely appreciate how Parliament might interfere in setting out the negotiating terms – as indeed it should.
A defeat in Parliament is not out of the question and could tip us towards an early General Election. I’m not sure how useful this would be as it would still most likely produce an increased Tory majority, especially with the contraction of the UKIP vote.
It seems to me that we are making a bad position worse at almost every turn.
You might think being an author is a big enough challenge in itself what with all that research and writing but that is only part of what is required of a writer in 2016.
Once you have written your book, found a publisher, checked proofs and signed everything off another whole new world of challenges opens up: marketing, promoting and selling your book. That is just where I am right now.
I started seriously researching Fighting for the Empire at the beginning of 2013 and got down to the hard work of writing early last year. With the writing progressing well I felt it was time to find a publisher so headed for the London Book Fair in April 2015 and found an excellent publisher in Sabrestorm. Yesterday the book was officially published and tonight we are holding a launch party. All very good but that is the starting pistol for a multi-faceted promotional campaign which requires the author to turn into a salesman.
What does that consist of? Almost anything that will help you connect with your audience, quite a challenge in my case as the Kelly story is so wide-ranging it touches many different interests and potential audiences as the publisher’s publicity vividly explains.
Social media is obviously a great tool and both the publisher and myself have been making plenty of noise there over the last few weeks and will continue to do so.
Writing about the book, the research, the context and the subjects it covers is another way and that has already kicked off with blogs on various sites such as Goodreads.
Having an author video is nowadays considered essential so I have filmed one myself and have another professionally filmed interview following soon.
Being prepared to go and talk to groups – reading circles, special interest groups, community bodies – is also an essential part of the promotional mix. Talking about something you have been immersed in for over three years is no problem at all and I have devised a wide range of talks covering every possible angle. If you want to hear more just ask. Book talks (pdf).
Of course, one of the best promotional tools is reviews and nowadays we can all review the books we read in various places so if you are kind enough to buy Fighting for the Empire and like it, please take a few minutes to rate it on Amazon, Goodreads etc and add a line or two about it.
Fighting for the Empire is available direct from the distributor Casemate, Amazon. It is also available through all bookshops.
Many of those most committed to maintaining the UK’s membership of the European Union are nailing their colours to the mast of a second referendum. The thought fills me with dread.
Haven’t we had enough of that deeply flawed, divisive process that reduces complex issues to ludicrously simplistic questions? I certainly have.
The EU referendum produced nothing but bitterness and division, with the focus of both sides entirely on negative campaigning. The Scottish independence referendum 18 months earlier was the same. It left our countries divided against themselves.
As someone who voted to Remain but without any great enthusiasm for the bloated bureaucratic monster the EU has become, I have a lot of sympathy with those who value continuing our close ties with Europe. I hope that as we loosen those ties through the Brexit process we don’t cut them entirely and that our European partners don’t either. I want a Brexit deal I can live with that maintains trade links, allows the appropriate and very necessary movement of people around the continent of which we are an important part.
I don’t want the sort of settlement that the little Englanders want.
How does that leave me when it comes to the Brexit deal? Do I wish it well or do I wish it ill? If I thought a second referendum was a good idea I would wish it ill so that ill-tempered, fractured negotiations lead to a deal that leaves the UK isolated and diminished both economically and politically. That sort of exit would be more likely to stir people into voting to reject it in a second referendum, although I do not share the naive optimism of many who think there are millions of people who regret voting Leave in June. I don’t want damaging negotiations. I want us to put the bitter divisions behind us and find a way our country can develop and prosper. I want a Brext deal I can at least live with.
Just when could you sensibly hold a new EU referendum?
The other difficulty in the campaign for a second referendum is timing.
When will the final deal be concluded? Is it when the flawed Article 50 process is complete? Surely not as that is merely to agree how we leave not what the future relationship with Europe looks like. I still believe we need to get on with that part of the process.
The final deal will be when we have the new trade and other important agreements on security, education, research and so on in place – whatever they may look like. That will be around the middle of the next decade. Most people – me included – will want to know how those impact them, their families, their businesses and their communities and that sort of detail will simply not be available at the end of the Article 50 process. A referendum at that stage would produce an ill-informed debate in a vacuum – and we have just had one of those.
A second referendum? Please, no.
David Worsfold 